He explained: “We had conceded six goals in the previous two, we lost both games 3-2, that was telling me we had to score three just to get a point.

“When we get on our game we’ve got goals in us, we’ve got good attacking players. But we have to give ourselves a good base.

“I wanted to match Blackpool up. They get a lot of the ball at home, they play patient football and try and release Ince on it, who is a massive threat. We needed to combat that.

“I just felt as well as that solid base it would give young Ravel Morrison a little bit more freedom in having the two ‘holders’ in behind him with Jonathan Spector and Hayden Mullins.

”The 1-1 draw was fought out on what was a parks pitch at Bloomfield Road.

Clark revealed that Blues had to change and play very deliberate tactics to counter its effect.

“It was a tough one because we’ve got lots of good little technicians who want to play, and the ball was bouncing around, players were taking two or three touches just to get it under control and you end up giving yourselves problems.

“So the easy way round it was for us to play good diagonal passes, or little faded passes down the side and people to run without the ball hard, which is what we did.

"Blackpool did the right thing in the first-half, we didn't.

"It was a game where we had to have good quality passes to turn the opposition defence to cause them problems, either them slipping or the ball ricocheting off their legs as it was quite bobbly.

"We got them facing their own goal, we gave them issues with the ball bouncing around them.

"We did that better and we had people running without the ball quite aggressively.

"Michael Appleton agreed that the bobbly nature of the pitch didn't help either side.

"I do think, without making too many excuses, the pitch had a massive part to play in the game," said the Blackpool boss.

"There were a lot of passes going astray for both sides."It becomes a trust issue. There's not a problem with players trusting each other, when they've got people around them in tight situations.

"But a lot of the time the roll of the ball either bounced up against someone's shin, or it bounced out of play, a pass was miscontrolled because the ball bounced up in front of them.

"That made it a little bit difficult.

"That's why I tried to get as many attacking players on the pitch at the end of the game in the hope that something might just drop or fall to one of them."